Ze-Angry-Wombat

Who am I?

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I am a Linux Enthusiast who has been using Linux now for 15+ years.  I started with Slackware when I was still in high school, and through the years have had experience with EVERY major Linux distribution there is and many minor distributions as well.  I have been part of several Linux Distro projects in the past including T2 SDE.  I have also used most BSD distributions, and am familiar with how they work.  At my various jobs, I have worked with many Unix OSes, Linux OSes, Solaris, Windows, and MacOS (Within the last two years I was introduced to, and became an expert at work on, the Mac hardware and software).

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That being said about four years ago I became highly disenchanted with the current OS choices and decided that I should make my own if I didn't like what was available to me.  I started work on Alfheim ISE then, though I was calling it something else at the time (the name escapes me).  Two years ago, I started my current ISD job, and met a gentleman who really encouraged me to get this done.  We both started the blueprint of laying down the ground work for Alfheim ISE and hashing out all of the ideas that I had come up with in the last couple of years.  I decided to use Rust as the programming language for Alfheim ISE, and he turned me onto Arch Linux (which I have been using religiously ever since).

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I don't do much in the way of 'fun' except work.  I love what I do for my job, and then I come home and I get to work on my technology projects.  I enjoy listening to music (my tastes range so widely in this department that if it boils down to whether or not I like song not whether or not I like a band/artist/genre).  I also enjoy politics and news.  I listen to news and music while I program, that's about the depth of fun.  Away from the computer I go for hikes sometimes with the dogs and family and sometimes we go swimming.  We live in the woods of Northwest Arkansas on Beaver Lake.

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My belief system is varied as well.  I do not follow a set religion but rather identify as a Pagan.  I am a strong believer in the old world ways (Norse, Celtic, and Buddhism make up the major tenets of my belief system).  All that being said I strongly moral and have a strong set of beliefs that I feel every good person should have.  All life is sacred and all life should be treated with respect and care.

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Why a new system?

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I get asked this so much that I feel that I have to bring it up when I talk about me.  I come from the background, where (like mentioned above) I have used so many different Operating Systems.  I like somethings about each of them, and despise things about each of them.  I realize that there will never be a perfect Operating System (without a system that can run programs from every OS) but there is a way to make a near perfect system in my eyes and I am going to map out my goals for this one (I realize I am making two OSes here, Alfheim ISE and Alfheim Linux, the next section deals with Alfheim ISE).​

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1. An OS written from scratch with a modular kernel and a modular OS format.  How is this envisioned? The kernel is very minimal set to only boot with the minimal features and load the OS.  The OS will handle everything,  It will be designed so that what loads in the subsystem of the OS is only the bare-minimum (think of the modular kernel options for the Linux kernel, the only things that will load when your OS boots is the drivers that you need for your system).

2. Everything will be written with the idea of simplicity first (This does not mean feature less, it just means that they software will be written with the minimal amount of code to achieve the task).

3. Everything will be released under the HLIN Public License, this is the one of the major benefits of this system, there is nothing preventing anyone from access to the base source code, from modifying the source code, or from releasing their code under another license.  Because everything is being written from scratch we are able to offer the whole code base under the HLIN License.

4. The concept is a GUI interface merged with a CLI interface.  This enables people to make changes to running code on the fly, and to make changes to their complete system while it is running.  This is another benefit from having a minimal kernel and building 95% of the system into the OS and not the kernel.

5. Support for x86_64 processors, and full support for multi-processor computers.  This has the benefit of being able to have a better user experience.  By taking full advantage of multi-processor computers (and multi-core processors by extension) we are able to spread the load efficiently across many processor cores, this ensures that the system runs the same on 4-cores as it does on a 1,000 processor system at the core (mind you the performance gains of a 1,000+ processor system will still result in it running better on that system, but the software won't need to be modified for different systems).

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So why a new Linux?

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When I started developing Alfheim ISE, I was running into issues with my system.  When I did more research and talked to my associate, we determined that there was an issue with the subsystem of most of Linux distributions that were out there.  Namely systemd was causing issues with productivity.  I could have used Gentoo (but that proved to offer it's own set of issues) or FreeBSD (which also proved to offer it's own issues), but ultimately it was decided that I could just modify Arch and release a version of it that would prove to work for all of my needs.  Now before someone says well MacOS and Windows doesn't use systemd let me outline why I didn't use either of these.  Windows is the easiest one :: any opensource development on Windows is next to impossible.  MacOS is a little more difficult :: while it does offer support for the common opensource tools, I found I was spending more time troubleshooting OS issues than I was building things.

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Alfheim Linux is aimed at my Linux using friends, and at those that want to switch to Linux but don't know where to start.  I am working on making it as user friendly as possible and working to make it minimal but feature rich.  I am adding a new package management system that will replace the text based package management system currently used in Arch.  It will take advantage of the two package repos mainly used in Arch (the core repositories and AUR).  I am also working on building a new repo design for Arch that will be custom for Alfheim (though it will be able to be added to other distributions easily) that will include both binary packages (from the core repositories and packages built from source and tested stable) and then a repository of custom PKGBUILDS, that will be used as the unstable branch.  If unstable is enabled in the Package Management system, then it will look for the PKGBUILDS first and install from there, then it will look for packages in the binary system.

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On top of all of that Alfheim Linux will be a testbed for Alfheim ISE software.  As we develop software for Alfheim ISE we will release it into the Alfheim Linux repo so that we can continue testing it on a live system.

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So now that you know who I am a little about my reasons for launching these two projects, please join me and my dream.  Together we can make great music!!!